Action needed: social housing providers must be made accountable for the treatment of their tenants | Steve Bundred
Angela Rayner’s renters’ rights bill is admirable, but it won’t help those living in substandard accommodationSteve Bundred is a former Audit Commission chief executiveOn the tree-lined north London street where I live, scaffolders arrived seven years ago. Metal poles were erected around a housing association property next door to me, owned by the social housing provider Peabody, to allow for external refurbishment work to be carried out. But today, that scaffolding still stands – and those repair works have never been carried out.“This is yet another example of Peabody’s casual neglect of their residents. They do not respond to emails from me or senior council officers and have also ignored an enforcement notice served on them by planning officers,” the chair of Islington council’s planning committee, Martin Klute, recently told the Islington Tribune. Peabody owns more than 5% of Islington’s nearly 112,000 properties. And it has well below average performance on every key indicator of landlord services. Inaction on dealing with hazardous cladding, damp, rodent infestation or broken-down lifts, and failure to tackle neighbour nuisance or other forms of antisocial behaviour, are typical of the concerns that Peabody tenants raise regularly. Continue reading...
Angela Rayner’s renters’ rights bill is admirable, but it won’t help those living in substandard accommodation
- Steve Bundred is a former Audit Commission chief executive
On the tree-lined north London street where I live, scaffolders arrived seven years ago. Metal poles were erected around a housing association property next door to me, owned by the social housing provider Peabody, to allow for external refurbishment work to be carried out. But today, that scaffolding still stands – and those repair works have never been carried out.
“This is yet another example of Peabody’s casual neglect of their residents. They do not respond to emails from me or senior council officers and have also ignored an enforcement notice served on them by planning officers,” the chair of Islington council’s planning committee, Martin Klute, recently told the Islington Tribune.
Peabody owns more than 5% of Islington’s nearly 112,000 properties. And it has well below average performance on every key indicator of landlord services. Inaction on dealing with hazardous cladding, damp, rodent infestation or broken-down lifts, and failure to tackle neighbour nuisance or other forms of antisocial behaviour, are typical of the concerns that Peabody tenants raise regularly. Continue reading...
